A company bids a project with some margin as profit. In the consultancy business of soft projects, there are no specific rules of bidding as the works are diverse. Usually, one company wins over another by scoring high on the technical proposal and by quoting less amount in the financial proposal.
Say a company might fake the availability of existing personnel by manipulating their qualification and experiences or presents more number of days than required or shows more personnel than required or does not follow the exact methodology as mentioned during the implementation or writes and delivers a low-quality report. The company makes a huge profit by not being in integrity. As a company, it saves a good margin of money and calls it their profit from that project or consultancy.
In a particular case, one of the government officers calculated how much exorbitant margin money the company is saving from a particular project. This officer needs to approve all the deliverables and was also responsible for the successful implementation of the project. The officer was delaying the process of approvals for small reasons, when he was asked about the cause of delay, demanded a bribe. The officer had the reason and said that you are saving a very high percentage of money and it was not ethical for you to quote so much excess money for the work that you are doing. Paying me a percentage of the money will not cause any loss to your company. In this loop of unethical system, the business goes on as usual. Because the company quoting very high, now finds a reason to say that I need to bribe these officers. Sometimes the company and officers collude and accordingly submit the proposals.
The trend is so much that a company which quotes ethically with a minimum margin of profit will suffer as there is an expectation from the system and either it has to pay the bribe even while making losses or has to face the trouble from the corrupt officers.
The staff in such exorbitantly profit-making companies also get spoiled. They will not have a great impression of the organisation. So, sometimes do excess expenditure and also will not deliver quality work. They think the company is paying very less to them and not paying anywhere close to the amount quoted in the proposal. That is one of the reasons in many companies the financial proposal is kept as a secret document with the senior management staff and never shared with the junior staff.
